The Me That I Can Be
by allihearisradiogaga
Summary: Even after being admitted to the hallowed halls of Hope's Peak Academy, Souda Kazuichi finds himself an outcast, a victim of bullying, and despite his attempts, a friend to no one. It is only after he meets the Super High School Level Fashionista, Junko Enoshima, that he finally finds someone who believes in him. And he's willing to do whatever it takes to keep his new friend.
1. Meeting

Hope's Peak Academy was a big place. That was what Souda told himself. It was a big place, full of people, and not all of them had time for him. He could accept that. He leaned back in his chair, tinkering with a small mechanical dog. It wound up to walk, but also contained a small circuit board that allowed the machine to move its eyes and make barking noises. He as working on getting the tail to wag, too, without looking. He knew he could, but it couldn't hurt to learn to make it happen just a bit faster.

A couple of other students walked by, laughing to each other as they cast glances in his direction. Souda frowned and turned away, his fingers just working at the small automaton. He told himself he was worrying for nothing, _someone_ would like him…

He earned his place in this school. He had worked hard, honing his mechanical skills, working in his father's garage when he wasn't around starting with lawn mowers and cars and working more and more complicated. Just because his _parents_ said he wasn't good enough, didn't mean that they knew anything. He had made it to Hope's Peak, hadn't he? And though he hope it would prove to his parents that he was worth something, they had mired in the view that his skill wasn't even one that was very valuable, with the other kinds of geniuses that went there. He might was well have been a reserve student, not that they'd throw away money for _his_ tuition.

Souda finished with the tail and wiped his hands on a handkerchief, which he stowed in an inside pocket of his school jacket. He was always careful not to even get the smallest smudge of grease on his uniform, which he kept meticulously clean and pressed. Even if he wasn't worthy of his position at Hope's Peak, he could at least look the part.

A school bell rang for lunch, and Souda stood, gathering the robotic dog in his hands. He walked out of the classroom where he had been in a study hall and into the hallway, which was filling with students on their way to the cafeteria. Souda sank into his shoulders, allowing himself to seem even shorter than he already was, to drop out of the eye level and hopefully the attention of anyone who would bully him.

This did not work, however, as the small machine in his hands was swatted to the ground, where it broke into a few pieces. Souda looked down at it for a moment before glancing up at the person who had knocked it away from him. He almost brushed the imperious boy's hair with his nose, the way it protruded from his head.

"M-mondo Owat-ta…" uttered Souda, feeling himself tremble.

"Hey, bumbly fuck, look at me," said the taller boy. Souda had been averting his eyes, but Mondo grabbed his face and pointed it at his own. Souda could feel his eyes filling with tears. "Fuck, don't cry. Jesus, it's embarrassing…" He let go of Souda's face, shoving him away slightly as he did. Souda wiped away the tears with the back of his hand, but more welled up to replace them, blurring his vision.

"I need you to look at my fuckin' bike later, okay? You're supposed to be the best at that kind of shit, and it's rattling in a way I can't' figure out." Souda responded with a weak nod, and Mondo walked away, toward the lunchroom. "You better fuckin' be there," he said, turning and walking backward as he did, pointing directly at Souda as he did before turning to disappear into the cafeteria.

Unable to hold back the tears any longer, and almost alone in the hallway not that most of the other students were at lunch, Souda slumped against the wall, sobbing. The tears flowed freely, cascading down his cheeks. His chest heaved, and wiping away the tears with his hands did nothing to clear his eyes. He wasn't even respected by his classmates—they were supposed to be his peers, but they didn't care about him. They didn't think his talents were worth anything. He was there to be bossed around and used when necessary. Nobody _wanted_ him there, he just _was_.

He couldn't even get through a conversation—one conversation, one confrontation—without totally falling apart. How was he supposed to be liked if he was, like Mondo had put it, a "bumbly fuck"? He was useless, and…

He felt a touch on his knee, and he instinctively jerked it back, holding up his hands in defense. He took a deep breath in, stopping his sobbing as a means of defense against whatever touched him.

"Are you okay?" asked a voice. It was soft, and light, and kind. Souda moved his arm from in front of his eyes, slowly, blinking at the girl squatting down in front of him.

"I-I'm…" Souda choked back another sob and wiped away the tears again.

"Don't worry," said the girl. "I've seen you in class. What's your name?"

"K-kazuichi Souda," he said, looking away as he frantically pushed away the last of the tears. When he looked up, the girl was handing him the pieces of the broken mechanical dog.

"Well, Souda, I'm sorry those assholes treat you like this. It's not fair." She placed the broken robot in his hands. "This thing looks really neat. Did it walk?"

Souda nodded, sitting up straighter. He pushed the parts of the dog together, the way that they would fit if they had never been broken apart. "The tail wagged, too, and some o-other stuff…" He trailed off, breaking eye contact as he did. "I've built ones like it a million times," he said. "It's fine that it's broken."

"It's not fine that he broke it, though," said the girl. In an instant, she had leapt to her feet. She held a hand down to Souda. He stared at it for a moment before taking it and allowing the girl—who was stronger than she looked—to help him to his feet. "I'm Junko Enoshima," she said. "And you just stick with me. Trust me," she looked him in the eye, with a sly smile. "You'll do great things." She took him by the hand into the cafeteria, and by the time they got inside, Souda realized that he even had a smile on his face.


	2. Metamorphosis

_A/N: Thanks to DisappearingOctopus on Ao3 for the beta!_

Souda pulled the beanie down over his hair, now cut much more roughly than he had ever let himself have it before. That was how people in the magazines Junko posed in wore their hair—they put so much effort into making it look like they did not care about their appearance at all. The beanie made it look like he hadn't spent almost an hour putting his jet black hair into the right place, braiding a little bit down the side to make it look like had put just a little bit of effort in, a little detail that _maybe_ Junko would notice. He hoped so.

She had told him that this would make him feel better, and she was usually right. The school rules stated that he didn't have to wear his uniform, and instead could wear clothes appropriate to his Super High School Level skill. And Junko had suggested owning his skill of machinery and mechanics. "And none of those bluh ugly paint smocks people in garages wear," she said one day while they ate lunch. "You have to, like, make it your own, if you ever want to be taken seriously."

This wasn't too hard. He had found a white mechanic's jumpsuit, one that he hoped his father wouldn't notice missing from the garage, and dyed it a bright yellow. That color would stand out. He never would have wanted to stand out before, but Junko had said that was what made people want to know you, want to be your friend.

Souda wanted people to want to be his friend.

He looked in the mirror one more time, tilting the beanie back on his head just a bit so that his widow's peak poked down, visible on his forehead. He'd been made fun of for it before, but Junko said that defining features were what people looked for. He didn't have many of those, so he had to own what he could. He grinned at himself, his even, square white teeth filling out an awkward smile. His cheek quivered a moment before he let his mouth fall down into the thin line that it was accustomed to. Junko said that he could be liked, that he could be whatever he wanted if he was confident. That was what she did, and it worked for her.

 _Yes,_ he thought, _but she is also a world-famous fashionista. She's in magazines. Things like that come easy to her. She's much more than a lousy mechanic._ The words in his head took his father's voice as he thought them to himself, and he forced himself to turn away from the mirror. He just had to be the him that Junko would want him to be. And then he could be happy.

By the time he made it to Hope's Peak, he felt the sweat building on his skin beneath his jumpsuit. He rolled up the arms, and decided that it looked cooler like that anyway. If it didn't, he could ask Junko. She would tell him what looked better. She would tell him, because she was his friend.

Souda stopped in the middle of the hallway, making a few other students almost collide with him as he did. _Junko was his friend._ She had helped him, yes, but not in the way that a class-assigned lab partner or gym class teammate would. She really wanted to see him better. She wanted to be his friend, and she _was_ his friend. He could feel himself blushing as his heart rose. The thumping in his heart was louder than the pistons in some of the older engines he repaired in his free time. He had made a friend, but not just any friend—he was friends with one of the most popular girls not just at Hope's Peak Academy, but in the entire world. Junko Enoshima was his friend.

That left him wondering what she saw in him. The color began to run from his cheeks, but before he could let himself sink too low into his own self-pity, he saw a pair of pink pigtails through the crowd of his classmates, and he forced himself to grin.

"Mister Kazuichi Souda," said Junko in mock formal greeting. She held her hand out to him with a flair. "May I just say that your fashion sense has improved so much!" She let go of his confused hand and brought him into a big hug. Souda's hands were left at his sides, and he felt the blood return to his cheeks as he completely blushed. Junko let him go, and he hastily flattened out his jumpsuit, though there were no wrinkles there.

"G-good morning, Junko," he said, looking more at the floor than at her.

"Come on, Souda, you've got to be more confident than that!" She grinned and put her hands on her hips. "I mean, this is just me. What're you going to do when you have to talk to someone important?"

"I think y-you're important," said Souda.

"Gah, I like that," said Junko, brushing the compliment away. "But I have to be honest, I'm digging the new look. I think you're almost all the way there."

"A-almost?" asked Souda. His hands fidgeted with each other as he stood there, and he could feel a bead of swear form on his forehead. He had tried so hard to make himself what she would want as a friend, someone who was cool, someone she might even want to go on a date with sometime, or even…

But that didn't matter, it mattered that he was the him that she wanted him to be, and he wanted so much to change himself, to be that person. But even with the hair, and the clothes, it wasn't enough.

"There's, like, something missing. You need that extra _bite._ "

"Bite?"

"Like, I mean, look at me," she said, gesturing to her own outfit. It was created out of what was once a school uniform, though with a much shorter skirt and more cleavage than Souda imagined were originally a part of the school's plan. "I have reclaimed what was not even that good looking, this uniform, and I made it my own. With this hair," she ruffled her large pigtails, "and these boobs." She grabbed her chest and winked at him. "Though, if any of the magazines ask, I just tell them it was my hair."

Souda realized, perhaps a moment too late, that she had meant that as a joke, and gave off a half-hearted laugh. He realized that he had been staring at her chest for a bit longer than she had intended him to with her gesture, and looked away, sort of wishing that he didn't have to.

"Look, Kaz—I've got to meet my sister for lunch, so I probably won't be able to see you again today. But maybe tomorrow I can talk to you about this mechanical project I want to start to work on. I think you might be able to help me out."

"A mechanical project?"

"Yeah," said Junko. "Like, remember when I first talked to you a few weeks ago, and you had that little robot dog?"

Souda knew that the thing was barely what could be called a robot; it was the type of thing that he could build and take apart and rebuild in his sleep. He simply nodded, instead of pointing that out. A whiny know-it-all wouldn't be a person that Junko would want.

"Well, I was thinking that maybe you could help me make a little robot sort of like it."

"Another dog? I could build…"

"No, no," said Junko, giggling. "Not a dog. I was thinking something more like these." She was pointing to the hair ties that held in her pigtails, which had smalls stuffed teddy bear faces on them.

"Oh," said Souda. "Yeah, th-that we can do."

"I'll see you then," she said, and leaned forward to peck him on the cheek. He could feel her lip gloss wet on his cheek and didn't mind the way it smudged. He would have a hard time getting himself to wash that cheek again. She backed off and began to run away, to whatever class she must have had next. "And don't forget," she called back to him, "to find that bite!"

* * *

The bleach was easy to find—that was always around in the garage, in case something needed to be picked up or cleaned. The Hope's Peak Academy facilities were always fully stocked. Next he went to the art studio. He was able to enter largely unnoticed, even with his new outfit. He snagged as many markers as he could and snuck back out without having to speak to anyone.

Once he was back in the garage, he set to bleaching his hair. It was difficult to do in the wash sink. But he was able to run the stuff through his hair a few times, his nose recoiling at the acrid smell. The bleach stunk his scalp after a few wash-throughs, but he continued what he was doing, his mind settled only on one thing the whole time: his end goal, the person Junko knew he could be.

He dried off his hair with some rags that were kept in the back of the garage for wiping grease. He brushed it all forward in front of his eyes with his fingers to see that, finally, it was a bright shade of yellowish white. The bleach started to burn his eyes, so he flipped it back.

Next, Souda found a pair of needle nose pliers and a small bowl. He dumped out the pile of markers he had taken and broke open some pink ones, carefully extracting the spongy interior and using the needle nose pliers to squeeze out the pink ink into the bowl. This process took a while, and Souda was careful not to waste any of the ink, squeezing until he had harvested the last drops.

Once he had used up all of the markers he had collected, he took the half-full bowl and dipped his fingers into it. Then, he ran his fingers through his now-blond hair. He spread more and more of the ink through his hair, his fingers running through it slowly. As he rubbed his scalp, the skin burned in protest. He did not give in, even when the smell of the permanent marker ink mixed with the bleach to somehow create an even more offending smell. Some tears welled up in his eyes as a reaction to the stench, but he blinked them away.

The thin ink took a while to spread through all of his hair, and when it had, he used the rest to go over his hair again, to make sure that the color held. When he was finished, he left the bowl in the work sink and went to the nearest car in the garage, where he used the side mirror to check his work. Running his fingers through it, he was able to see that he had colored all of his hair. His hair was totally pink now. _It's darker than hers,_ he thought, _dark like blood._ He tapped it at his widow's peak a few times to be sure that it was drying and holding. He took a last look in the mirror to admire his work.

He hadn't done a bad job. Yes, he couldn't get the toxic smell out of his nose, but his hair had changed, so now Junko would be right about how cool he was. He broke his gaze with the mirror, and as he did, he remembered Junko's words about "the bite" he needed to complete his look.

The color would stand out, just like hers. Maybe it wasn't the same exact color as hers, but it would stand out. But Junko said that the real bite wasn't her hair. It was her breasts. Souda lingered there for a moment, his mind going over how she had proudly flaunted her chest, showing him how it worked for her…

It wasn't the hair that would make him the him that he needed to be. He needed something more. The hair was good, but it needed a _bite_ to go with it, or else it would just be another shade of his failure and disappointment.

He had changed his clothes, his hair, and he was at least _working_ on the way he carried himself—Junko told him to walk like he had somewhere to be. He tried to do that, but he found himself to just be rushing places, more than anything else.

Souda looked back into the car mirror and gave himself a weak grin, his teeth flashing for the shortest amount of time before disappearing again behind his thin lips. He paused for a moment, and then opened his lips again, spreading them wider this time, to reveal his even, square teeth. He needed a _bite_.

He knew what he needed to do. He half-ran over to the shelves of tools by the back of the garage and rummaged around for a moment before he found what he was looking for. Then, he went to the big work sink and placed his hands on either side of it, holding himself up. He stood up straight, tool in hand.

Souda held the file up to his mouth and hesitated for a moment. His fingers were shaking, and he forced himself to breathe. The breaths did not come easy. Junko had told him that he needed a _bite_ to add to his look, and he was going to get a bite, one hell of a bite.

He opened his mouth, and as he inhaled, he could taste the metal of the file in the air. He placed it on his front teeth, angled on the side. He took a deep breath, bracing himself.

He grated the file inward, scraping away at the enamel on his tooth. His hand jerked back instinctively, but he forced himself to keep a steady hand. The ridges of the file grated at his teeth, causing spikes of pain all through him. The pain caused his hand to jerk backward, all the while dragging the file back over his tooth. Tears formed in his eyes and quickly spilled over his eyelid and down his cheeks. Like an electric shock to his nervous system, the impulses from his teeth as he rubbed the abrasive metal hurt like nothing he had ever felt before.

Souda had felt pain many times before this. When his father had been angry, when his mother was discontent with her life, when the bullies in his life had even _noticed_ him, when everyone else had not. He had felt pain, but he had never felt this _kind_ of pain. It wasn't superficial, and it wasn't emotional. It was inside and out, all at once—everywhere at once.

Souda didn't notice at first when a splotch of blood splattered against his hand as he filed. He paused, not removing the file from his mouth. He had hit the gum, and irritated it to the point of bleeding. He hadn't noticed the pain, thanks to the greater pain of the filing. He stared at the blood on his hand for a moment, but continued to move the file to his next tooth, grating it back and forth. The tears falling down his cheeks met as his lips and there mingled with the spit and blood dripping from his gums.

The greater pain outdid the lesser. The way in which he was filing his teeth caused more pain than the way he was tearing at his gums, so he barely noticed that he was bleeding. The pain of the filing was so great, the fear of being rejected didn't even surface in his mind. The pain, as terrible as it was, eating at him from his own mouth and through his whole nervous system, was numbing everything else.

This was it. The sharp teeth, they were definitely the bite that he needed. They were a distraction, a pain that overcame other pain. They were the same as him, pushing forward with his new self, the him that he could be. The blood spit dropped into the work sink, and Souda noted with a detached mind that it seemed to be almost the same shade as his new hair. A jolt from a tooth nerve being grated down pulled him away from that thought and elicited more tears. It hurt to become happy, but he was almost there. Junko had told him how, and he was doing it.

He was going to be happy. He could almost taste it.


End file.
